The artist's Southern accent rose over the noise of the bar as he argued the New South vs. the Old South vs. The North with a velocity that had me expecting the skinny white boy to slam a fist down on the table and knock over our beers. "You're wrong." He insisted. "No one knows defeat like the South! You're just fucking ridiculous."

But the South, we maintained; people mass-migrate from the North, from Gary, Indiana, from Detroit, Michigan. People run to The South now. It was defeated at one point. But Gary, Indiana still reverberates with defeat in Y2K.

"You're wrong." He insisted.

I sat between him and Chris. The artist pointed his finger past my face, into Chris's. "No one knows defeat like the South. What the fuck do you know? You don't know poverty!" And his eyes started welling up. They'd fed him too much free drink at the art gallery. We'd just come from his show there. A very good show. He's a brilliant kid. His art is peaceful white lines and endearing naivete; a perfect snapshot of an unsettled mind, settling for long enough to do something beautiful. And the gallery gave him free alcohol for his effort. And as the North battled the South in his head, after a long night of drinking and saying "Thank you," the alcohol helped the artist unsettle his mind again.

The artist wouldn't let Chris talk. Nor me. "You fuckin annoy me so fuckin bad, man." He said to me, as an aside to the historical argument. I got up from the chair, walked to the bar proper and sat on a stool, facing away and drinking my beer. I ignored them. But every few seconds I heard, somewhere behind my back; "Do you know poverty? What the fuck do you know about poverty?". I turned and saw the artist's friends and his girlfriend, dressed in their art show clothes, crowding Chris, sitting in chairs on all sides, accusing Chris of upsetting the artist. From where I sat at the dark bar, the artist was only a silhouette in front of the bright light of the jukebox, but I could tell he was now fully crying. A yarn-width string of clear snot, lit from behind, grew from his nose toward his lap. I reached from my stool, held Chris's shoulder and motioned that we should leave.

"I feel horrible." Said Chris, out in the street. "I didn't want it to go that way. But he must have been wanting that all night. But I feel really bad. I didn't want him to cry."

"Well, he wanted to; like you said." I answered as one of the artist's friends, a big, beer-drinking girl in a sparkly red dress with her hair pinned up, came behind us on our way to our car. "Why were you guys fucking with him?" She asked.

"No, no. He was the only one talking." I answered for the both of us. "He worked himself up."

"He just wanted to be closer to people." Chris added. "Now he's crying and people are hugging him and he feels better. He just wanted closeness…"

The woman wasn't satisfied. "Well, I just don't like seeing my friend hurt, that's all."

"If you really want to help him." I said. Not feeling guilty. "Then don't let him drink so much that he starts crying." But her face was glazed to the suggestion. I see her out at the bars; she trusts alcohol. I love it. But I don't trust it.

(click here to post your opinons on this s(h)ite. --- Ed.)